Outsourcing Tips: How to Train Your Freelance Outsourced Staff

As a busy online entrepreneur, you know how valuable it is to have an outsourced staff of freelancers and virtual assistants to help you grow and sustain your business. Virtual assistants can be located as close as the same town as you, or they can be located across the globe in another country and time zone. Regardless of their location, you want to make sure that they are properly trained to do exactly what you want them to do for your business. In this article we'll share some tips that will help you train your freelance staff so that they are able to do the tasks you require.

Create training videosOne method for training your outsourced staff, especially if they live too far away for you to train them in person, is for you to create training videos. Depending on the task you can create a talking head video where you are actually talking to the camera and explaining each step, you can create a slide show video with text instructions that they can follow along with, or you can record a screen capture video that follows along as you demonstrate how to perform a task on the computer.

The benefit of creating these, 'how-to' videos is that you can tell and show them exactly what you want them to know. While they are watching, they can pause the video to take notes, or rewind a section and watch it again.

One of the pitfalls of this method is that you have no way of verifying that they actually watched the video and consumed the training.

Create an online courseThere are websites online that will allow you to create an online training course to teach your virtual assistants the content that you want them to learn. There are several online vendors that provide either free, or low cost solutions for creating online training courses. Here are a few of them:

ProProfs Training Maker is a web based learning management system designed for both business and education. You can deliver the training anywhere at any time. The person taking the course must have a computer with a browser installed and a connection to the Internet in order to participate in the training. You can add images, presentations, videos and audios to your courses.

One of the benefits of designing a course using a web based solution is that it allows you to create a quiz at the end of each module of training so that you can measure their understanding of the materials.

ProProfs also tracks who takes your training courses along with how much time they spent on the course, their location and IP address. Courses can also be translated into 50 languages, and they offer a free, 7-day trial of the software.

Source: Proprofs.com

Mindflash allows you to upload your existing training materials, whether they are in PowerPoint, video, word or PDF format, and convert them into an online course.

You can add quizzes, and they have an automated grading feature and real-time performance tracking. Mindflash offers a reporting feature, and it sends automated reminder emails on your behalf to students enrolled in a course. You can try it for 30 days for free. The pricing plans range from $29 for a basic plan for 5 trainees, up to $999 for the enterprise plan, which allows you to service up to 1,000 trainees.

Source: mindflash.com

For all of these outsourcing tips, you can even package and sell the training courses that you have designed to other business people who might need to train their staff. This could be an effective way to turn the expense of training into another way to generate revenue.